Even worse, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to build your brand, expand your customer advocacy, and scale your revenue.
The reality is, partner programs can be successful for companies of any size. In fact partnerships are one of the best (and underutilized) ways to scale your company for sustained growth. Once strong partnerships are forged, they’ll bring in ROI with minimal upkeep and low EPC(earnings per click). The best part is there’s low churn in SaaS because the relationship with the client is handled by an intermediary.
If you’re just starting out, your partner program at this stage doesn’t need to be terribly complex as well. You should test the waters with basic, low-involvement affiliate and co-marketing partnerships using monetary or non-monetary incentives like lead sharing or backlinks.
It’s important that you don’t bite off more than you can chew. You’re realistically not even close to being able to enter a reseller or co-marketing program — but co-creating one or two pieces of marketing content at regular intervals is a great way to gain exposure and traction while you’re working to improve and test your product.
After learning from these closely tactics, you might be able to gain some partner traction for your SaaS product as well.
The majority of new customers from partners were brought in by exercising stronger relationships with new partners onboarded post the pandemic.
Here’s the breakdown of numbers:
When looking to form a strategic partnership, make sure both companies can benefit from the relationship. No one wants to enter into a partnership they can’t benefit from.
If you aren’t benefiting from a partnership, then you lose out, and if your partner isn’t benefiting, it can damage your reputation and ability to develop new partnerships.
The 3 strategies that can work for you in your partner outreach program are:
If you get this wrong, nothing will ever matter and most likely your program will be a failure. You have to know your audience. Ask yourself these questions before starting a partner program for your SaaS product:-
- Who will sell our product?
- Why will they sell our product?
- What benefits can I offer to them?
- How can we collaborate?
For Eg. One of the partners I onboarded early onto the program was Ethan, who was kind enough to mention our product on his website here.
One of the most effective ways to reach your audience is to make a list of prospective clients and start engaging with them to get your foot in the door. You should often make lists, clean them to avoid any hits and send regular follow ups. Conversation rates were pretty healthy for most campaigns which led to more calendar meetings and partner conversations.
Don’t be surprised to be rejected or expect to receive immediate responses. From experience, You could be contacted by partners months after you had completed my outreach. I use lemlist for this, which is another great tool. Here’s a sample email template I used with the campaign performance.
A. Super targeted
What some people don't realize is that 50% of the campaign's success depends on your target audience and how good your research is. I apply this and then focus on potential Pipedrive partners only.
B. Straightforward
Unlike selling, pursuing business partnerships allows you to be a bit more direct. You can notice the immediate push to pass the gatekeeper and get in touch with the decision-maker. In other words, whoever's reading this knows, from the first sentence, to whom they need to forward this email to.
C. Selling the next step
I didn't talk about partnership details or myself at all. My goal isn't to make a deal that second. I want to get a reply first and set up a meeting. That's where my focus is and that's one of the key reasons behind a 🔥 reply rate.
What you put in your email is equally important. Remember, whatever you are writing- other humans (i.e. real people) read them. Don’t aim to be desperate or appear to be too salesy. These people could be your future partners, so try to give them a valid reason to be one.
Like it’s said, no one likes a needy person. Never step on that line in your sales pitch.
One another thing that worked for us is actively communicating with audiences on Facebook, Reddit, Quora and Linkedin. If you see discussions happening around the topic, feel free to jump in and be a part of it.
Even seasoned SaaS companies that have been dominating the space for years can benefit from partnerships, and startups have even more to gain.
You can only do so much as one company. By creating a partner ecosystem, you’re enabling your company to generate revenue using the time and resources of others in a mutually beneficial way. Your reach can go way beyond your direct audience with the help of a strong partner ecosystem.
The more positive relationships you have in your industry the more enabled for success you’ll be.
can help you generate demand for your product and drive revenue on your behalf with minimal effort from you.